Tag Archive for: United States

WPS and Talisman Sabre: learning from the past, looking to the future

This article is part of a series on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ that The Strategist is publishing in recognition of International Women’s Day 2017.

Exercise Talisman Sabre is Australia’s largest bilateral military exercise with our treaty ally, the United States. It takes place every two years, includes over 30,000 participants and is designed to enhance interoperability and build links to address shared threats within the Asia–Pacific region.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR1325) on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) was integrated into the exercise for the first time in 2015. The resolution looks at the different impact conflict has on women and girls and calls for their greater participation in conflict prevention and resolution. The integration of UNSCR1325 into Talisman Sabre is an important story because how we prepare for operations has a direct impact on how we behave in operations. Integrating gender considerations into exercises is an effective way to build understanding and test different approaches to operationalising UNSCR1325. In the lead-up to Talisman Saber ’17 in July, it’s timely to look back at what we learned last time and consider how we can continue to build on that work.

In mid-2014, a small group of civilian and military staff began advocating for the inclusion of UNSCR1325 into Talisman Sabre. Although this initial support came from the ground up, sustained support and engagement from Australian and US senior leadership ultimately made UNSCR1325 a key focus of the military exercise. That support ranged from statements to military commanders by Australia’s Foreign and Defence ministers and the US’s secretaries of State and Defense, highlighting the need to prioritise UNSCR1325 by specifically tasking staff. That reinforced UNSCR1325 as a foreign and security policy priority and created a strategic imperative that was difficult to ignore.

In a perfect world, integrating gender perspectives happens as “business as usual” with little to no guidance from above. However, we aren’t there yet. While grassroots movements continue to build support and demonstrate the utility of applying gender perspectives, sustained support from our national leaders via a top-down approach is still required. Diplomats and commanders alike must continue to keep UNSCR1325 central to their thinking, regularly drawing attention to it and issuing specific tasking to compel action.

Having a clear accountability framework for the integration of UNSCR1325 into Talisman Sabre was crucial. Following the release of Australia’s National Action Plan on WPS in 2012, the Australian Department of Defence developed an Implementation Plan, which specifically required the Australian Defence Force to integrate UNSCR1325 into exercises. Although there was a recognition of the principled importance of that task, having a clear reporting requirement was effective.  Moving forward, there’s room to strengthen accountability around UNSCR1325. The next National Action Plan could pay particular attention to preparedness and explicitly outline how Australian government agencies can ensure UNSCR1325 is integrated into training, education and exercises. Civilian agencies could consider developing their own implementation plans that help translate strategic policy into agency-level work programs.

Integrating UNSCR1325 into Talisman Sabre highlighted a gap in soldiers’ training and education. Increasing baseline understanding about the resolution depended on a small number of specialists delivering ad-hoc presentations and sharing resources. Some staff were able to attend gender adviser training in Europe, but there was no domestic mechanism in place to train and educate a large group of people in Australia. The development of the Australian Military Gender Advisers Course is well-timed and will help to fill this gap. On the civilian side, there’s a plethora of training available on gender mainstreaming and gender in development, but there’s a gap when it comes to civilian-focused gender training for civil–military operations. With a Military Gender Advisers course in the pipeline, it might be worth considering whether civilian agencies should create something similar.

Talisman Sabre proved that integrating gender considerations into planning for operations requires a whole-of-government effort. In 2015, civilian advisers and military planners worked side-by-side to develop exercise products including the Commander’s Guide to Implementing UNSCR1325 into Military Planning. Such an approach ensured that exercise products were holistic and connected to broader political, diplomatic and humanitarian considerations.

But whole-of-government coordination doesn’t just happen, it requires proactive effort. To achieve such coordination, there’s room for civilian agencies to step-up their role in operationalising UNSCR1325. Building on Talisman Sabre ‘15, DFAT will dedicate two civilian Gender Advisers to Talisman Saber ‘17 to ensure consideration of civilian perspectives and priorities. The Department will also ensure that 50% of staff deployed to this exercise are female. By dedicating specific resources and ensuring equal participation in exercises, civilian agencies can have greater influence in how UNSCR1325 is conceived and planned for.

As we prepare for the next iteration of Talisman Saber, civil-military-police practitioners in Australia and the US need to remain focused on UNSCR1325. Although Talisman Sabre ‘15 highlighted how far we’ve come, it also demonstrated have far we have to go.  We need to maintain strong leadership and build clearer accountability frameworks, develop more comprehensive training programs and proactively engage and invest in whole-of-government coordination. If we can do that, we’ll create the cultural and institutional change needed to ensure gender perspectives are applied in civil-military operations and enhance the on-the-ground outcomes for women, girls, men and boys.

Nuclear balancing and the curse of the heavy ICBM

These days, when Australians turn to thinking about worrying nuclear weapons issues, they tend to look first to the alarming pace of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, second to the growing role of nuclear coercion in Russian strategic policy, third to the challenges unfolding in the current Asian nuclear order, and perhaps fourth to the prospects for longer-term nuclear proliferation within the Middle East. But there’s another worry that ought to be occupying more of our attention—the concept of the great-power nuclear balance in the early 21st century.

It’s been over 25 years since Australians paid much attention to that balance. Not since the days of the Cold War have Australian strategic thinkers obsessed about what we might call the granularity of nuclear balancing issues—such as comparative basing modes, throw-weights and modernisation rates. In the meantime, we’ve tended to focus upon other nuclear relationships, typically ones characterised by highly-asymmetric nuclear forces. And that means we’ve tended to forget some important lessons from the Cold War era: that nuclear balances are artefacts of human endeavour, not naturally-occurring phenomena; that the balances aren’t static, but shift over time; that the ‘shape’ of an arsenal is just as important as its size (more on that below); and that US allies feel anxious when the US nuclear arsenal looks inferior to those of its authoritarian great-power competitors.

I suspect we’re about to relearn some of those lessons, as we enter a new phase of the great-power nuclear relationship. Despite the recent flurry of media interest in the possibility of a new US–Russian nuclear ‘arms race’, the new phase is unlikely to be an actual race. More likely is that we’re entering an era of competitive modernisation between the US and Russia. I don’t use that description to trivialise what’s occurring: this is still a competition that goes to the core of the future nuclear balance between the two powers.

Stable nuclear balances are those in which neither side feels pressure to fire first. And that typically goes to the shape of an arsenal, not simply its size. Take the case of an arms control agreement between two superpowers to limit their countable nuclear warheads to 1,000. (I use the adjective ‘countable’, because warhead numbers typically depend upon agreed counting rules for specific delivery vehicles.) Country A chooses to deploy 300 single-warhead ICBMs in fixed silos, 600 warheads on multiple-warhead (MIRVed) missiles at sea, and 100 warheads on its long-range strategic bombers. Country B chooses to build 100 ICBMs, each with 10 warheads, in fixed silos.

Blind Freddy can see that the different shapes of the two arsenals make for a highly destabilising balance. Country B must fire first—for the simple reason that its entire arsenal is vulnerable to an attack using only 200 warheads (2 warheads aimed at each of 100 fixed silos)—and both sides know it.

Ok, let’s look at another scenario. Country A still has the arsenal described above. Country B deploys only 50 of its 10-warhead heavy ICBMs, but otherwise begins to mimic Country A, by deploying 400 warheads on its submarine force and allocating 100 warheads to its bombers. Hands up anyone who thinks that’s better. Well, it is, but the improvement’s marginal. Country B’s retained a large first-strike force, but built a more secure second-strike force to backstop it. With that force structure, Country B’s still going to fire first. This second scenario is one that’s relatively familiar to us because, by and large, it represents the current US–Russian balance.

In that second scenario, the problem of the heavy, vulnerable ICBM still lies at the heart of the balancing problem. Stability can be improved only by Country B substantially lowering the MIRV-ing rates—and throw-weights—of its ICBMs.

Now let’s put the problem into the modernisation context. The US is currently engaged in a debate about modernisation of its ICBM force. The force has been de-MIRVed over the years, so that all missiles now carry only one warhead. Yes, it’s vulnerable to attack because the missiles are deployed in fixed silos. But any attack would ‘cost’ the aggressor, because it would require two warheads to destroy a silo containing only one warhead. Moreover, the aggressor would have to target the US homeland—a big and escalatory step in any nuclear conflict.

Meanwhile, Russia’s already modernising its force and, relevant to the discussion above, replacing (rather than retiring) its current heavy ICBM, the 10-warhead SS-18. Its new heavy ICBM, the RS-28, was unveiled in October 2016. While still in development—it mightn’t be deployed until 2018—it’s said to be capable of carrying 10 larger warheads, or 16 smaller ones, or some combination of warheads and penetration aids to enable a successful attack through improving missile defences. Too big to hide, too heavy to move and too important for an opponent to ignore, the RS-28’s going to be a major factor locking us into the second scenario sketched above—one in which Russia continues to deploy a substantial fraction of its strategic arsenal on destabilising heavy ICBMs—regardless of what the new US administration decides.

Getting past the globalization bogeyman

Image courtesy of Flickr user Michael Shaheen.

As we enter 2017, globalization has become a dirty word. Many see it as a conspiracy by elites to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. According to its critics, globalization leads to an inexorable increase in income and wealth inequality: the rich get richer, and everyone else gets nothing. One bogeyman begets another.

While there is a kernel of truth in this view, it gets more wrong than right. And getting it wrong has consequences: at a minimum, scapegoating; more worryingly, bad policies that are likely to make our real problems worse.

The first thing we need to understand when we think about globalization is that it has benefited an enormous number of people who are not part of the global elite. Despite continuing population growth, the number of people who are poor worldwide has fallen by more than a billion in the last 30 years. The beneficiaries include the no-longer poor in, among other countries, India, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, and Mexico. In the rich world, all income groups benefit, because goods—from smartphones to clothing to children’s toys—are cheaper. Policies aimed at reversing globalization will lead only to a decrease in real income as goods become more expensive.

The call to rein in globalization reflects a belief that it has eliminated jobs in the West, sending them East and South. But the biggest threat to traditional jobs is not Chinese or Mexican; it is a robot. That is why manufacturing output in the US continues to rise, even as manufacturing employment falls.

So our focus should be on managing rapid technological change so that it benefits everyone—no easy feat, but not impossible, either. Tariffs and trade wars will do nothing to help.

It is true that globalization has fueled greater income inequality. But much of this increase should be welcomed, not condemned. Whether inequality is bad depends on how it comes about and what it does. There is nothing inherently bad about inequality.

In India and China, globalization has brought greater income inequality, because it provided new opportunities—in manufacturing, in back-office jobs, and in software development—that have benefited millions of people. But not everyone. That is just the way progress happens; while we might like it better if everyone were to prosper in tandem, such situations are incredibly rare. To decry this sort of inequality is to decry progress itself.

In rich countries, too, some of the increase in inequality reflects better opportunities, owing to the move from a national to a global market. Those with exceptional talent and innovations now have the entire world in which to get rich. It is hardly a crime to get wealthy by sharing talent with more people or by making new things that benefit everyone.

Of course, there is a dark side to inequality. The rich have outsize political influence, and can often rewrite the rules to benefit themselves, their companies, or their friends. In the United States, this is not much of a problem in presidential elections, which remain open; but it is a huge problem for Congress, where our ‘representatives’ are so constrained by the need to raise money that they are unlikely to be elected or to stay elected without support from wealthy interests.

This is not to claim that legislators are corrupt, but only that, as Harvard Law School’s Lawrence Lessig has argued, the institution is corrupt and incapable of representing people who do not have the clout that money provides. Yet it is not obvious that the best solution is to reduce inequality, rather than to change the way politics is financed. Rich people should buy yachts, establish foundations, or become philanthropists, not buy the government, which should be taken off the market.

More generally, inequality that results from ‘rent seeking’—getting rich on the backs of others while not contributing anything of value to the economy—is the real bogeyman. Classic examples include bankers lobbying the government to weaken regulation, and then—when the banks fail—leaving the taxpayers with a costly mess to clean up. The resulting bailouts have given breathtaking sums of public money to people who were already fabulously rich.

For example, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—the huge US government-backed housing finance agencies—used their political muscle to make it impossible for Congress to regulate them, while paying their private shareholders and stoking the housing crisis. Likewise, the farm lobby wins billions every year in subsidies. Pharmaceutical companies are encouraged to lobby government for higher prices or patent extensions on existing products, rather than to make new drugs. Real-estate magnates get the tax code changed in their favor.

These activities actually produce less than nothing, because they slow economic growth. When the easiest way to get rich is by legalized theft, innovation and creativity are mug’s games.

Arlie Russell Hochschild of the University of California at Berkeley has written about people who are enraged by seeing others ‘cutting in line’ ahead of them. This anger is unjustified when it is the reaction of, say, American whites who, accustomed to racial privilege, are facing a more equal world. The justified anger is toward a government that enriches special interests at the expense of everyone else. In a slow- or zero-growth economy, where what you get can only come at my expense, such legalized theft is intolerable.

Growth depends on globalization and on legitimate inequality. We cannot ignore those who are hurting, but we need to ensure that our ‘fixes’ don’t make the problem worse. The true bogeymen are the rent-seekers who have captured so much of our government. The inequality that they have wrought is the inequality that needs to be eliminated.

Intelligence, Trump and expressing uncomfortable truths

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Election integrity, which includes protection from tactics and techniques that might spread panic and propaganda, or cyber intrusions that might influence the outcome of national election cycles, should be seen as a core security challenge.

The US presidential election has underscored the potential subversive role of external actors, specifically Russia. Certainly, a range of experts have suggested it would be currently extremely difficult to directly alter the election system through cyber meddling. There’s no credible evidence of consequential hacking, although some of the information about the 2016 US election and the alleged active interference by the Russian Government remains classified. Nonetheless, there’s a broad groundswell of public distrust surrounding the integrity of the outcome, captured by Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, who called for recounts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Additionally, the validity of the US election was marred by other accusations such as (virtually non-existent) voter fraud. Three weeks before the election outcome, Trump himself claimed the electoral process was rigged, fraud was widespread and the results should not be trusted. These types of controversies act to undermine the legitimacy of the electoral apparatus, eroding trust in the reliability of American democracy.

At the same time, in dealing with other barriers to election integrity, any hostile foreign power efforts to manipulate public opinion before the vote (or conceivably future attempts to influence politics via tampering with election results) points to momentous risks to both modern-day democracy and national security. The US intelligence community is rightly concerned that Vladimir Putin’s Russia sought to deliberately interfere in the recent presidential election. This concern was highlighted in October 2016 when James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence and Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security, issued a joint press release in the wake of a hack that stole material (released on WikiLeaks) from the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. They stated that ‘the US Intelligence Community is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations’. The FBI and the CIA had also reached an identical conclusion.

Alarmingly, President-elect Trump has again publicly dismissed such intelligence assessments about the Russian connection to the campaign hacking; assessments that are presumably based on computer forensics and other sensitive and time-intensive sources and methods. He has repeatedly labelled such reports as baseless. In response, Senator Ron Wyden retorted:

‘I just think it is bizarre for the president elect to refuse to acknowledge what the direct of national intelligence and the head of the department of homeland security have agreed on… It is one thing to doubt intelligence assessments for a good reason; it’s another to just dismiss them out of hand.’

In that sense the Trump team has set a reckless precedent in choosing to blatantly ignore particular intelligence estimates.

Trump’s incredulity and willingness to bluntly dismiss insights on the security problem of criminal election manipulation and related political developments can, and will, have major consequences. In a post 9/11, post-Iraq war world the authority and standing of the intelligence profession is under siege. Trump‘s statement that he simply doesn’t believe intelligence agencies when it came to Russian cyber activities will reinforce public perceptions that the shadowy world of intelligence is one of ‘rogue elephants’, irrelevant data and unreliable characters. That’s despite Trump himself failing to provide any coherent rationale as to why he’s indifferent to such evidence, beyond an implication that intelligence professionals who analysed the cyber hacking were ‘politically driven’. Trump has characterised the US intelligence community as riddled with bias based on what  appears to be little more than a knee-jerk personal whim.

Trump’s instinct to openly contradict what US intelligence agencies have conveyed to him has underlined a wider pattern of ongoing indifference towards the community and its officials. Early reports have surfaced indicating that Trump has declined to accept daily national-security intelligence briefings that are available during a transition process. Intelligence agencies should play a distinct role in the business of government. New pressures will arise from shifting security concerns and evolving transnational threats. Spies are neither miracle workers nor clairvoyants, but there’ll remain a demand for high quality, timely, integrated and impartial intelligence to help support foreign and defence policy making to ensure a high degree of national security.

Former deputy CIA Director Michael Morell has asserted that Trump has ‘zero understanding of how intelligence works’. Trump’s willingness to promote conspiracy theories and echo false information will inevitably lead to a volatile and unpredictable policy mix. It may encourage some risk-aversion in future intelligence assessments to better control and ‘sell’ intelligence information. Under a Trump White House, even if the job is done right, it appears that intelligence product will no longer be able to depend solely on its intrinsic significance to grab the attention of the Oval Office.

Cyber wrap

Image courtesy of Flickr user frankieleon.

The infamous botnet infrastructure ‘Avalanche’ used by cyber crooks to launch their malware campaigns and phishing attacks was taken down last week in a historic victory for international cooperation against cybercrime. After four years of work, a coalition of law enforcement partners and private sector companies from 40 countries orchestrated multiple arrests, seized servers and sinkholed or blocked more than 800,000 malicious web domains. Check out this advice from US-CERT to make sure your computer isn’t infected with Avalanche malware.

International cyber cooperation continued this week, with India and Qatar inking a new cybersecurity agreement. Along with four other pacts, Indian PM Narendra Modi and Qatari Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani committed to deepening technical cooperation on cybercrime, specifically joint operations to combat terrorist financing and money laundering. South Korea’s Internet & Security Agency has also offered to share its cybersecurity expertise in the training of policymakers, law enforcement and military to help build cyber capacity and boost digital economy development in the Central African state of Gabon.

Australia is establishing a new Cyber Security Growth Centre, announced Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science Greg Hunt and the Minister Assisting the PM for Cyber Security Dan Tehan on Monday. Part of the National Innovation and Science Agenda released last December, the industry-led not-for-profit Growth Centre and associated Cyber Security Growth Network will receive $31.9 million over the next three years to boost the success of Australia’s digital products and services industry. Atlassian’s Director of Security Craig Davies will take the helm as CEO of this organisation, which is expected to open its doors early next year.

The Saudi government has confirmed that its General Authority of Civil Aviation suffered a major cyber incident in November that resulted in the loss of important data and brought operations to a standstill for several days. The attack was executed via Shamoon, the same malware used in the infamous compromise of Saudi oil company Aramco in 2012. The aviation agency was reportedly targeted as part of a broader effort against several Saudi government agencies and Saudi fingers are unofficially pointed at Iran.

Cybercriminals made away with more than two billion Roubles (AU$42 million) from Russia’s Central Bank earlier this year, according to the bank’s annual report released on Friday. The hackers used fraudulent client credentials to compromise correspondent accounts and although the bank managed to recover three of the five billion roubles initially stolen, the heist represents a trend of high-value cyber thefts following the US$81 million loss from Bangladesh’s central bank in February. In an unrelated comment, Russia’s Federal Security Service announced on Friday that it had thwarted a foreign spy agency misinformation plot designed to undermine the confidence in Russia’s banking sector through a series of cyber attacks accompanied by fake news of a national financial crisis and rampant bankruptcies on social media.

Over in the US, the House of Representatives has passed a bill that would establish an interagency intelligence committee to combat Russia’s misinformation operations and restrict the movement of Russian diplomats within the US to a 25 mile radius around their official posts unless cleared by the FBI. The bill, which comes in the wake of the US Director of National Intelligence officially calling out the Kremlin for meddling in the US election, is expected to be passed by the Senate before the end of the year.

Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, created by executive order earlier this year, also released its final report last Thursday. The Report on Securing and Growing the Digital Economy puts forward a series of recommendations on topics such as network security, innovation, and cyber workforce. The Commission’s last words are designed to be a helpful handover document on US cyber policy for Trump, with Obama affirming that ‘it is time for the next Administration to take up this charge and ensure that cyberspace can continue to be the driver for prosperity innovation and change’. Hopefully that advice will be integrated into Trump’s existing cybersecurity efforts, which include promising a Defense review of critical infrastructure cybersecurity and appointing three Republican cyber leaders to his transition team.

And finally, ICPC has got your back if you’re in need of a couple of longer cyber security reads this week. A survey of more than 500 security professionals helped produce the 2016 Global Cybersecurity Assurance Report Card, which profiles the security confidence, risk assessment competence and threat mitigation strategies of IT professionals by both country and industry. Accenture’s new report, The State of Cybersecurity and Digital Trust 2016, offers an assessment of cyber threats and maps trends in corporate attitudes to online trust, cybersecurity budgets and organisational structure. And lastly, PwC’s 2016 Global Economic Crime Survey reveals that cyber attacks on Chinese corporations have increased by almost 1,000% over the last two years in light of the spread of IoT tech. Happy reading!

Michael T. Flynn and America’s new war with ‘radical Islam’

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Australia’s newest interlocutor for strategic policy in the White House is Michael T. Flynn, the retired US Army lieutenant general who is expected to be Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser. In his 2016 book, The Field of Fight, co-authored with Michael Ledeen, Flynn calls for a resumption of US war on the ground in the Middle East to defeat ‘radical Islam’. Would Australia join such a war?

The authors see renewed war as an essential move to squash the global alliance that has come together to destroy America. That alliance includes, they say on page 76, not only Hezbollah, Islamic State and al-Qaeda, but also Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua. The authors suggest that Putin’s government doesn’t understand that it’s aiding and abetting radical Islam. They say that the incoherence of Russia’s counter-terrorist strategy helps jihadis spread radical Islam throughout the country and beyond.

The book argues against the view that peace is the normal condition of mankind. It says that the Powell doctrine, which holds that the US should only go to war if there’s a domestic consensus in favour of it, is backwards. What counts, the authors say, is what the public thinks at the end of the war.

Their war plan is premised on the destruction of jihadi armies and killing or capturing their leaders. The authors contend that current US policy of targeted assassination over a protracted time, supported by intermittent military interventions, isn’t helping. The only possible conclusion from the Flynn and Ledeen book is that US armies should return to the Middle East.

Those new policies would require a change in US diplomacy. The authors say the country needs a new set of 21st century alliances which ‘will emerge naturally from the military and political campaign’ of the new war.

As for those governments that ‘support our enemies’, the US strategy must be ‘weakening them at a minimum, bringing them down wherever possible’. The war won’t be easy or short, and the country needs to mobilise as it did in the Cold War and in the Second World war against other messianic movements.

Just what that set of views might mean for Australia in practice is far from clear. It’s hard to imagine that Flynn will have any influence among current senior leaders in the Pentagon or in a State Department led by a more sober-minded person, such as Mitt Romney. Flynn says himself that he has been a maverick most of his life. Both Flynn and his co-author have been branded as conspiracy theorists, with Ledeen arguing previously that Western European countries were in alliance with radical Islam to bring America down. Flynn’s appointment as Director of the Defence Intelligence Agency was terminated by the Obama administration after two years in the job.

It would be almost impossible for the US to resume ground force operations in the Middle East to destroy all jihadi forces, spread as they are across many countries, so the more extreme parts of the Flynn vision for a new war are likely to remain his fantasy. Australia won’t be asked for new ground force contributions to the Middle East on any scale under a Trump administration. But Flynn has left open the door for a new Cold War against the governments that don’t crack down hard on radical Islamists.

That’s the worrying part. How will the new US administration define the adherents of ‘radical Islam’? Flynn has specifically named Pakistan as soft on the ‘ideology’. For such countries, Flynn advocates a hard line, while saying they shouldn’t be punished twice, once by the extremists and then with a follow-up from the US. The book praises Singapore for insisting on secularism, and holds banning headscarves up as a positive move.

The book calls for a full-frontal assault to demolish the ‘political and theological underpinnings’ of ‘Radical Islamic terrorists’. It’s hard to argue with that, but who does he include in the definition of ‘terrorist’? In a recent article, Flynn included among such vile criminals the Turkish spiritual leader, Fetullah Gülen, whom Turkey’s President has also labelled a terrorist. Flynn wants the US to grant Turkey’s request for extradition of Gülen for his alleged leadership of a plot to overthrow the Turkish state by force. There’s little public evidence, if any, supporting the Turkish claim that Gülen is a terrorist. In fact, there’s much evidence to the contrary.

So if Michael Flynn survives in his post in the White House for more than few months, and I believe that he may not, he’s likely to become marginalised for his histrionic views. Apart from all of the domestic voices already organised against Flynn, and those emerging, many US allies will find themselves quietly calling for him to step down. Flynn’s obsession with a full-on confrontation against ‘radical Islam’ is problematic. It’s not the same as fighting terrorists and armed groups like Islamic State. Flynn has sometimes said that Islam isn’t a religion, but a political ideology. Acting in any way on Flynn’s jaundiced view of ‘radical Islam’ and its alleged non-Muslim supporters, stretching from Nicaragua to Russia and China, is a course that most US allies will find as unprincipled as it is impractical.

The viability of Australia’s refugee resettlement options

The protracted search for a viable resettlement option for recognised refugees on Manus Island and Nauru may be over, with the Australian government announcing it had struck a one-off resettlement deal with the US. But before popping the champagne, let’s further scrutinise the deal.

Previous governments have announced ‘solutions’ to refugee resettlement. The Gillard government’s ‘Malaysia Solution’ was blocked by the High Court in 2011 due to Australia’s inability to ensure that refugees would be afforded adequate protection. Similar concerns scuttled proposals to resettle refugees in PNG, Nauru or Cambodia. Many in Australia have defended those solutions, claiming the problem is refugees’ intransigence and not the proposals themselves. Jim Molan AO, co-architect of Operation Sovereign Borders, said as much during his appearance on Q&A last month:

‘These good people have a choice… the choice of making a life in Nauru or PNG or some other country. The only choice they don’t have is to come to Australia.’

Such thinking fails to acknowledge that a third-country resettlement option must be viable, and it’s been here that previous proposals have failed. As details of the US resettlement plan are finalised and announced over the coming weeks, it’s a good time to reconsider our national perspective on ‘viable’ resettlement.

While the UN Refugee Agency accepts resettlement of refugees in a third country as a solution to displacement, Article 33 of the 1951 Refugee Convention prohibits signatories from forcing refugees to resettle in other countries (PDF) where their life or freedom is at risk based on their religion, nationality, political opinions or membership of a particular social group.

In addition to its obligations as a signatory to the 1951 Convention, Australia owes obligations to refugees under various other human rights instruments. The Convention against Torture (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) all guarantee refugees basic rights including:

  • freedom from torture and other cruel and degrading treatment (CAT);
  • non-refoulement (CAT);
  • respect for human rights without discrimination (ICCPR, ICESCR);
  • right to work and to adequate standard of living including food, clothing and housing (ICESCR); and
  • the right to the highest attainable standard of mental and physical health (ICESCR).

Resettled refugees must rebuild their lives from scratch, facing language barriers and other challenges associated with human displacement, along with the mental health impacts of life-threatening persecution and indefinite detention. If we’re to meet our international obligations, let alone ethical or moral ones, viable resettlement options must have services able to address those vulnerabilities. Australia’s previously mooted ‘solutions’ don’t stack up against that criterion.

PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has admitted that his government doesn’t have the resources to settle refugees from Australia. Even if Australia could contribute to the costs of resettlement, PNG’s capacity to provide essential services is doubtful—developing adequate social security and mental health support is a long-term process. In the meantime refugees would be without the housing, employment opportunities and skills development necessary to build a new life. Refugees currently living in PNG have no access to mental health professionals. Working visas are only issued for a year.

Alarmingly, PNG’s legal framework not only fails to provide adequate protection of refugees, it criminalises certain basic rights. PNG hasn’t signed the CAT. LGBT persons are stigmatised in the community, have no legal protection against discrimination, and male same-sex activity is illegal. Mental health also carries a stigma. Suicide is illegal, and those who attempt to end their own life face jail time. Malaysia has similar legislation. Given the well-documented mental health impacts of prolonged detention, this approach to suicidal behaviour is highly problematic.

Turning to Nauru and Cambodia, there are well-founded concerns over the ability for refugees to access services essential to their livelihood. Nauru has not signed the ICESCR, and its capacity to provide the required social and economic rights is questionable. Mental health services are grossly inadequate, and reports of violent attacks on refugees outside camp confines on both Manus and Nauru raise concerns for their safety in the wider community.

Cambodia shows that money alone won’t facilitate resettlement. The AU$55m provided by Australia to assist in resettlement is of little utility when employment opportunities are limited and corruption widespread. The start-up cash given directly to refugees is equally short-sighted; a ‘viable’ resettlement option is one where refugees are empowered to maintain a sustainable livelihood. One of only two refugees trying to build a life in Cambodia has been unable to find a job. The Rohingya man has received vocational training, but without essential healthcare services, mental and other health problems developed on Nauru have impaired him from gaining work. A second man arrived less than a month ago, and four others saw returning to their countries—where they face fear of persecution—as a better option.

On the face of it the US seems like a viable option. But with many details outstanding we shouldn’t be complacent. For those refugees destined for the US that have family settled in Australia, a key issue is reunification. A refugee’s right to family reunification—unanimously approved by the 1951 Conference of Plenipotentiaries (to which Australia was a delegate) that adopted the final text to the Convention and has been repeatedly affirmed by the UNHCR—is abrogated by the Australian government’s proposed life-time ban on boat arrivals.

The US deal is a welcome opportunity to finally provide a safe refuge to people who’ve fled persecution. Australia’s responsibility now is to ensure that their rights will be upheld.

America and the world in transition

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In less than two months, the American political transition will be over. The 45th president of the United States will settle into the Oval Office. President-elect Donald Trump will become President Trump; President Barack Obama will join Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush as a living former president.

Speculation about Trump’s likely foreign and domestic policies is rampant, but little if any of it is meaningful. Campaigning and governing are two very different activities, and there is no reason to assume that how Trump conducted the former will dictate how he approaches the latter. We also do not yet know who all the principal advisers will be and how (and how well) they will work together.

But amidst this uncertainty, there are some things we do know. The first is that Trump will be greeted by an inbox piled high with difficult international challenges. To be sure, no single problem compares with the Cold War at its height, but the sheer number and complexity of difficult issues is without precedent in modern times.

Topping the list will be the Middle East, a region in an advanced stage of unraveling. Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya are all dealing with a mix of civil and proxy wars. The Iran nuclear pact at best manages one aspect of Iranian power, and only for a limited duration. The Islamic State (ISIS) may lose its territorial dimension; but it, along with other groups, will continue to pose a terrorist threat for years to come. The plight of millions of refugees constitutes not just a humanitarian tragedy, but also an economic and strategic burden to countries in the region and in Europe.

And Europe is already confronting many significant challenges, including Russian aggression against Ukraine, Brexit, the rise of populism and nationalism, and low rates of economic growth. Turkey poses a special problem given its increasing illiberalism at home and mercurial behavior abroad. The fact that Syria’s Kurds have proven to be America’s best partner against ISIS adds to the complexity of the foreign policy choices that await.

East Asia’s stability is jeopardised by China’s rise and strategic ambitions, North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile advances, and a host of contested maritime and territorial claims. In South Asia, there is renewed tension between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed rivals with a history of conflict. Just as uncertain is the future of Afghanistan, where more than a decade of international involvement and assistance has failed to bring about a capable government or quell the Taliban and other armed opposition groups.

Closer to home, oil-rich Venezuela has many of the characteristics of a failed state. In Africa, too, a mix of poor governance, low economic growth, and terrorism, civil war, or both is overwhelming many countries. And at the global level, few if any rules or penalties for reckless behavior apply in important domains (cyberspace being paramount among them).

While campaigning isn’t the same as governing, Trump’s campaign has added to the difficulties he will face. By running on a platform of ‘America first,’ Trump has raised questions among America’s allies about the wisdom of continued reliance on the US. The apparent demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership has created unease in Asia and South America about US predictability and about whether the US will remain a champion of global trade or embrace something closer to protectionism. Mexico, singled out for criticism by Trump during the campaign, faces a unique set of issues concerning both trade and immigration.

The incoming president and those around him will come under pressure to address all these issues and concerns quickly, but they would be well advised to take their time. The priority for now and for months to come ought to be to staff up the new administration. Some 4,000 positions must be filled. The new administration will also need to learn to work together and review existing policies before it can decide on new ones. There will be considerable focus on—and expectations built up about—the administration’s first hundred days. But there is nothing magical about the first hundred days of a 1,460-day presidency. It’s better to get things done right than to get them done by Tuesday.

Other governments would be smart to do more than watch and wait for the new US administration to sort itself out. Allies need to consider what more they might do on behalf of common defense. They can develop and share their ideas about how best to deal with Russia, China, ISIS, North Korea, and Iran. Similarly, they can begin to think about how to protect and promote global trade in the absence of new US-led accords. In this new era, the balance between global order and disorder will be determined not just by US actions, but also and increasingly by what others long aligned with America are prepared to do.

USN: to grow bigger, build smaller

There’s been talk lately about so-called plans for the US Navy battle force inventory to return to 350 vessels. President-elect Trump has pledged to begin the biggest naval build-up since the 1980s. The USN inventory was 271 battle-force vessels in 2015, well below its current target of 308 (which is currently under review).

A target of 350 is ambitious, and would require reversing a steady trend established over the past quarter century. The fleet declined markedly after the end of the Cold War, and now has 299 fewer vessels than in 1990. Most of that reduction happened in the 1990s as part of the ‘peace dividend’, but financial pressures have continued to whittle away at fleet strength, which has lost 66 vessels since 2000. (The source data is here.) Adding another 80 vessels won’t be easy. The ‘Reagan build-up’, which was intended to produce a 600 ship navy (but didn’t), added just 40 over the 1980s—just in time for the big post-Cold War cuts.

And it’s not like we haven’t seen plans for a larger fleet before. As usual, Augustine was here before us. The figure below appears in his 1983 book on US military procurement. It shows a decade’s worth of plans for the USN fleet. Each revision is less optimistic (in terms of both numbers and time) than the previous. Under the heading ‘reality sets in’, Augustine wryly observes:

 ‘For many years official projections have shown an eventual increase in the size of the fleet. For many years this has not been happening’.

3Source: Augustine’s Laws (1983)

It’s not hard to understand the reasons for this phenomenon. Like any Navy, the USN will always want more hulls in the water, because it most values command at sea and (as a bonus) because it will be able to do more. The figure of 350 isn’t arbitrary. As a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) paper shows, the USN is currently doing a force structure assessment that’s likely to revise the target fleet size up from 308 to something around 350 (the CRS notional force structure is 349).

With a hawkish new administration in place, the USN might find it easier to gain traction for those ambitions. The coincidence of Trump’s goal and the USN’s thinking hints that beltway briefings have already taken place. But selling the idea to a new president and Secretary of Defence—and to members of Congress with defence industry in their district—is the easy part. A fleet can’t be grown overnight, and there’s plenty of time (as Augustine’s observation shows) for enthusiasm to wane. Sustainably building up the USN is the work of many Administrations. CRS notes that reaching:

‘… and maintaining the notional 349-ship force structure might require adding a total of 45 to 58 ships to the Navy’s FY2017 30-year shipbuilding plan, or an average of about 1.5 to 1.9 additional ships per year over the 30-year period. Using current procurement costs for Navy ships, procuring these additional 45 to 58 ships might require an average of roughly $3.5 billion to $4.0 billion per year in additional shipbuilding funding over the 30-year period.’

In other words, the plan requires successive US governments to keep the faith (and the funding) for 30 years, when there’ll be many other budgetary pressures and an obviously restless electorate to placate. That’s a big ask. And historical data shows that the rising unit cost of new vessels is driving fleet size downwards.

The only other alternative is to find a way to build faster or cheaper or, preferably, both. And that would mean shifting emphasis to vessel types that could be delivered not long after the initial burst of enthusiasm. Adding numbers to vessel types on existing production lines would be a start. That would allow for economies of scale, so additional Virginia-class submarines or Arleigh Burke-class destroyers would make sense. But neither is cheap—around $2 billion apiece in procurement, and at least as much again over the next 20 years.

And while the USN would love to have more Virginia-class submarines, its current inventory of large surface combatants isn’t far from its requirement (84 versus 88). According to a Heritage Foundation analysis, the USN’s big shortfall is in small surface combatants—having only 17 against a requirement for 52. Smaller vessels lack the punch of larger ones, but can be bought in larger numbers. And having more vessels means being able to deploy simultaneously in many places, which is a boon for missions such as reconnaissance or anti-submarine warfare.

A wish for more small vessels has a good pedigree. Lord Nelson famously said that ‘was I to die this moment, “want of frigates” would be found stamped on my heart’. (Somewhat less famously, I’ve learned to love the corvette.) The USN probably won’t think this way—it seems especially attached to its capable big ships. But if it wants to cash in on political good will, it could do worse than rebuild its frigate arm.

Footnote: I’m not the only one thinking along these lines.

Continuous shipbuilding: Uncle Sam offers a helping hand

Image courtesy of Flickr user Jacob Z.

The US government’s largest contracted military shipbuilder, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), recently opened an office in Canberra. It seems unlikely that HII would’ve done that without encouragement from the US government, via the US Navy.

At Newport News in Virginia, HII design, build and refuel all USN nuclear aircraft carriers, as well as building Virginia-class nuclear submarines (along with another US shipyard). At Pascagoula, Mississippi, they are building 35 DDG51 Aegis destroyers, as well as most LPD and LPA amphibious ships for the USN. Not only do they build USN ships but they also sustain them globally.

Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne issued a typically enthusiastic media release:

‘The fact that Huntington Ingalls Industries, one of the world’s leading shipbuilders, is setting up shop in Australia is great news… HII is a world leader in defence industry, whether that be workforce development, fleet sustainment or naval vessel design and construction.’

During an interview, Jeff McCray, vice-president business development at HII Australia was asked whether HII wanted to buy a local shipyard. He responded:

‘Not at this stage. We have two major shipyards that build the vast majority of the US Navy’s ships, both are in the continental US. The role we see ourselves playing is as an advisor on shipyard design and work flow management in addition to workforce development’.

With ASC being divided into three parts—naval shipbuilding, Collins-class submarine sustainment, and shipbuilding infrastructure (read ‘construction site for Australia’s Future Submarines’)—has a firm like HII got a lot to offer Australia’s continuous shipbuilding program?

For a start, Defence’s $50 billion Future Submarine program is building conventional diesel-electric submarines, the Shortfin Barracuda, based on DCNS’s experience and capabilities in building nuclear Barracuda subs. These are smaller than the latest US subs, but Defence might have HII consulting on shipyard layout (which the Government might opt to retain ownership of) and workflow, together with recruitment and training of suitable staff to work on this project.

On the shipbuilding side, the $35 billion Future Frigate design and construction occurring at Techport’s site in Adelaide offers the possibility of having HII as overall project manager, supervising the shipyard and directing the activities of the chosen shipbuilder on behalf of Defence. That could also include workforce development.

The West Australian component of the shipbuilding program is likely to be of less interest to HII because there are already two extremely competent shipbuilders in WA—BAE Systems and Austal—and the design work for the offshore patrol vessels to be built there will have been completed.

We already have examples of experts helping us resolve Australian naval shipbuilding challenges.

The Winter–White report by ex-US Navy Secretary Prof Don Winter and Australian shipbuilding luminary Dr John White, though still unreleased, helped re-baseline the Air Warfare Destroyer construction project to the point where it is now meeting revised schedule and cost targets, as well as improving productivity on the second and third ships by incorporating lessons learned from the first.

John Coles was commissioned in 2011 by the Government to develop a plan to improve the repair and management of Australia’s submarine fleet. Defence Minister Marise Payne announced in October 2016 that his follow-up review, Beyond Benchmark (PDF), ‘found a remarkable improvement in the capability to successfully manage the sustainment of the Collins Class submarines’.

After being engaged by the Australian government in September 2014 to work on an enterprise-level plan for naval shipbuilding, RAND produced a wide-ranging 294-page report five months later. It proffered a strategy for continuous shipbuilding, while controlling costs, especially for the Future Frigate program. Intriguingly, on page 134 they gave a brief case study of HII’s shipbuilding operation at Newport News. They concluded that although the workforce there was well-paid, with little employment attrition, there’s little economic spinoff to the area apart from workforce wages. They opined that this may be because ‘the area has no heritage of entrepreneurial behaviour’, certainly not a statement which could be made about Osborne, SA or Henderson, WA.

While HII has much to offer Australia’s continuous shipbuilding program, there’s also a strategic reason for their presence. HII’s sustainment operations in Japan and Taiwan are very close to China. As Mike Smith, HII’s VP for strategy and development, told me: ‘In terms of overseas fleet sustainment of US Navy vessels, we have adopted an “asset light” model where we assemble bespoke flyaway teams with the requisite skills and gear to perform specific maintenance and repair activities on any platform anywhere in the region. However, regionally based solutions need to be explored when those repairs are more extensive. Australia could potentially play a key role in that.’

The government’s welcome to HII shows that they’re seeking expert help to ensure the continuous shipbuilding program performs to quality, schedule and cost in producing the new capabilities required by the RAN.